Next Sunday, 1st of February 2015, Ronald Koeman’s clockwork Southampton will entertain a somewhat fragilized Swansea at St. Mary’s Stadium for round 23 of the English Premier League, on a match that the Saints cannot afford to lose if they want to continue on the third place of the EPL table.

Southampton are definitely one of the most interesting teams at English football at the current moment. Their new head coach, Ronald Koeman, has been doing a fantastic work with the team from the South coast of England and when everyone thought that it would be impossible to improve what Mauricio Pochettino had done last season, the Dutch manager proved us wrong. The Saints are currently on the third place of table, right behind Chelsea and Manchester City, and although they have experienced some complicated moments back in November and December, they managed to overcome them and seem now to be back on track.

Their home defeat against Crystal Palace for the FA Cup was somewhat surprising, especially if we have in mind that Southampton were on an eight match row without defeats before the clash with the Eagles.

Southampton tend to be particularly strong when playing at St. Mary’s and their upcoming match against the Swans might present a very good opportunity for them to return to wins. For next Sunday’s fixture, Ronald Koeman is not yet certain if he will be able to rely on the services of Schneiderlin, Alderweireld, Long and Jay Rodriguez, since all of them are currently sidelined due to injury.

As for Swansea, the Welsh are probably not going through the best of moments. Two heavy defeats in one week’s time have certainly served to shake the team’s structure and they will need to come up with a strong reaction in order to overcome their recent poor results. The elimination from the FA Cup at the hands of the former EPL champions Blackburn Rovers most surely constituted a huge blow to the Swans’ players morale and if we add to that their heavy home 5-0 defeat against Chelsea, we will probably find plenty of reasons for Garry Monk to be worried about.

Although it is expected that the Swans will try to make a strong comeback at St. Mary’s Stadium next Sunday, it is fair to say that, at the moment, Southampton are a far better team and have everything in their favour to win the match.

Southampton

Stats: W-3 L-1 D-1

Recent Form - LWWWD

Swansea

Stats: W-1 L-2 D-2

Recent Form - LLDWD

Possible Line-ups

Southampton (4-3-3) - Forster - Clyne - Fonte - Gardos - Bertrand - Reed - Davis - Ward-Prowse - Tadic - Elia - Pelle

Swansea (4-2-3-1) – Fabianski - Rangel - Fernandez - Williams - Taylor - Shelvey - Carroll - Routledge - Sigurdson - Dyer - Gomis

Prediction

Southampton 2 Swansea 0